What makes more sense- duplex, triplex or quads?

[Rosanna Gonzalez]

My husband and I are beginning our search for our first rental properties. We are looking at areas like Lithonia, Lawrenceville, McDonough, and Conyers.

It seems like we can get decent 2 unit duplexes in the 70k-80k range and triplex to quads in the 150k range. Does anyone know the pros and cons of breaking up your investments? We are trying to understand if it makes more sense to get 2- 2 unit duplexes or get 1 4 unit quad.

We would get conventional financing with the first property and would do a subject to deal if we went with a second one.

[Emmanuel Wesley]

Hey Rosanna welcome to BP!

I'm relatively new around here myself but I will attempt to answer your question to the best of my ability. 

What are the pros and cons of breaking up your investments?  

 First of all, to my current understanding, this totally depends upon the nature of each deal and knowing how to read the numbers. Every deal will be different so you will want to invest where the numbers make sense. 

What are the pros of having two duplexes?

Well, right off the bat, all of your capital or investment won't be tied up in one property. If a natural disaster hit or fire burned down one of your properties, God forbid, you would still have one income producing asset. The same would not be true if all you owned was one quad. 

What are the pros of having a quad?

I would imagine maintenance on the property would be a little cheaper than maintaining two different properties. Also, one vacancy in a quad may not hurt as much as one vacancy in a duplex.

There may be others that I'm not thinking of. Hopefully a pro will chime in with some more advice for you! I would say the most important thing to consider are the numbers that make up the deal itself. If your ROI and cash flow will be significantly better on one strategy versus the other, then you know which direction to take. I hope this helps, and I trust if I'm wrong about anything that I've said a pro will correct me!

Best wishes to you and your husband!